by Aaron Dactyl
In a majestic ride over the mountain under a bright sunrise I climbed into the moving gondola car where bodies lay scattered about the rusty floor, on tarps, under sleeping bags, huddled in corners. The entire scene unfolded on a grand scale, the moving freight car backdropped by the glaciered north-face of Mt. Shasta and a vast valley set out to the west appearing like an alien landscape under the brilliantly gleaming sun. Slowly, others opened their eyes to this view, the train cutting across a mountain of dark black lava-rock harboring but a few rogue pines, and crossing a tall trestle that’s shadow held those of the train cars like a model railroad set out on the far-below valley floor.
On the downslope train stopped for thirty minutes at Upton siding which allowed us to walk the line and explore the high desert landscape of sagebrush, ponderosas, and oversized pinecones, until a northbound train passed. But before the train passed entirely our train began to inch south, sending us all running back frantically to the escaping gondola. All made it though. From there began the slow grinding descent around Sawmill Curve, past a rusted old derailment wedged into the cement-buffered cliffside, the train screeching down nearly 1,000 feet of elevation in a mere ten miles, then wrapping around Cantara Loop and crossing the Sacramento River into the Dunsmuir Canyon. The train crosses again and again the river, crossing the third time on a 1901 railroad bridge three miles north of Dunsmuir where downstream Mossbrae Falls, unchanged, spills forth idyllically in cool shade.
None of us would have minded the train pulling into the yard so we could go into town for food and beer, but the train stopped to CC just beyond the arch bridge. It was hardly even noon, and in a last minute consensus we decided the weather was nice enough to warrant a swim in the river, and so we caught off in Dunsmuir and stashed our bags in a discrete jungle up the cliff from the tracks, then hiked up the hill and over to a nearby gas station for cold beer.
We sat in the frigid Sacramento River rinsing off and drinking beer, most of us. After that we clamored around on the tracks and napped in a shady jungle. Chuck had brought his banjo, and later, by the river, under a bridge, began claw-hammering to the tune of “Freight Train,” an old Appalachian ballad by Ms. Elizabeth Cotton. I did not immediately recognize the song being strummed on an open-tuned banjo, but the beauty of its melody struck me familiarly like a Mozart Concerto.
Originally from Maryland, Chuck is a true loner among us who I did not dislike but never trusted entirely; and that is one reason I think him to be closer to an older generation of tramps than any of the rest of us, and I respect him. At a little over thirty he and has without a doubt ridden trains all over this country, working, playing music, and just surviving. Most recently he was living in the Portland metro area where he had a job. But “it didn’t work out.” He is heading to San Francisco for a concert and from there hitching up to Laytonville to do what so many tramps do this time of year: make money on “the hill.” And though he travels mostly alone, his gift of hammering the banjo is enough to keep him company in times forlorn.
•••
Except for a track-inspection truck and some sort of tractor apparatus twice zooming by on the rails, and nearly killing me, it was an otherwise quiet day along the mainline in Dunsmuir in which came only one northbound. We took the downtime to read, write, play music, and eat trackside blackberries when our legs stiffened from sitting. T-Box, frustrated with the lull in traffic (essentially just unaccustomed to the sometimes immense amount of waiting around involved with hopping trains), decided to accept a ride south with a friend who happened to be passing through. Not long after he left, around 5:30, a southbound came. We were more than ready to catch-out, but the line was long and odd and made almost entirely of mixed boxcars, none of which were open. Maggot, being well experienced himself, had already informed me through various stories of his ability to open certain boxcars if necessary, and judging by sealed or unsealed doors, along with the position of the springs on the wheel axel, he determined that most of the cars where empty and therefore potentially rideable. But he was wrong. After forcing open several MP and TBOX doors and finding them loaded with huge coils of cardboard and paper, we walked back the entire line to find only a handful of empty woodchip cars tacked onto the end. Chuck was the first to reach the DPU as the train began to pull away. But he let it pass. I was ready to ride though, and hollered back to Maggot and Andi as I caught on the front ladder of the unit so that they could spread out and catch on the back. Climbing aboard, I looked back to see Chuck running to catch up. But he was not able to make it. I waved him farewell and wished him luck. And that’s the way it goes.
And well enough, because inside the DPU was sweltering, and three dirty kids crammed in could only be made more uncomfortable by a fourth. I opened the windows and turned on the high-cool air, taking the engineer’s seat; Maggot and Andi sat out of sight on the floor as we passed the station and through town.
The Dunsmuir yard still held many of the same trains it did earlier this summer, plus several more that had recently been at Lamoine siding. Twenty miles south of Dunsmuir the train stopped at Sims, a mundanely named siding that is astonishingly rugged and beautiful. Here, the Sacramento River resembles the boulderous Bear Creek in Montana, whitewater rushing rapidly through deep channels and slanted stone slabs, untouched and undeterred by man or machine. Evidence of past camps was strewn the length of the siding, suggesting some nearby access, and I imagined myself returning some summer in the future and camping for days or weeks on end.
Increasingly rugged, the Sacramento descends much more drastically than the tracks, evolving into deep, dry, river channels that lead into Shasta Lake. The train hovered across on simple trestles, tunnel after short tunnel through the hills, spanning the largest portion of the lake after dusk, the water level higher than I have seen it in the last four years. Maggot sat in the front conductor’s chair with the dome light shining on a thick novel as Andi sat behind him in a chair facing outward watching the dark land rush by. The longest trestle I have ever seen curves off the mountainside south of Shasta Lake and spans the entire river valley into Redding, where the land levels out into the Sacramento Valley. The train slowed briefly at Culp to let a northbound pass, but never completely stopped. We blew past tiny Orland and through Chico with relentless fury, and Andi curled into a ball on the unit floor.
•••
The next morning in Sacramento I boarded an Amtrak with a legitimate ticket to Arcata. I rode the train to Martinez, where I was to transfer to a bus, and with a long layover I walked the tracks and lounged under shade trees in tall grass by the bay, never seeing another person. Several hours later I went into town for food, briefly leaving my bags hidden in the bushes. When I returned I found everything had vanished—absolutely no trace of my belongings. Except for my foodstamp card, a little cash and my camera which I kept on my person, I lost everything in Martinez, that which I had lived off of all summer and that which I planned to live out of in the woods of Northern California for the next couple of months. I did what I could but had no luck tracking down my things and so reluctantly climbed back aboard an Amtrak later that night. And I did so with an exchanged ticket back to Sacramento, but I rode all the way back to Portland.
•••
Northern California- Outside a dim, unincorporated town, deep in the woods of Humboldt’s Six Rivers National Forest, at 3,000-feet elevation, No Trespassing signs and high fences line a steeply graded, dirt, rattlesnake road guarded by mangy scarred pit-bulls with sagging black jaws, and a 666 padlocked gate. It’s chaos on the hill, but there is work to be done.
Eugene to Dunsmuir
—Cascades
and Black Butte subdivisions—
eugene to marion
[ Brooklyn Subdivision ]
missoula, montana
missoula to laurel
[ MRL’s 2nd and 3rd Subdivision ]
laurel to
>
greybull
[ Casper Subdivision ]
Greybull to wendover
[ Casper Subdivision ]
Wendover to cheyenne
[ Front Range Subdivision ]
cheyenne to salt lake city
[ Laramie, Rawlins, Evanston,
and Salt Lake Subdivisions ]
salt lake city to cheyenne
[ Salt Lake, Evanston, Rawlins,
and Laramie Subdivisions ]
cheyenne to roseville
[ Laramie, Rawlins, Evanston, Lakeside, Elko, Nevada, and Roseville Subdivisions ]
eugene to roseville
[ Cascade, Black Butte,
and Valley Subdivisions ]
